Suleiman I was the tenth ottoman sultan, known to the Turks as
Kunani, or lawgiver, and to the Western historians as "the
Magnificent, " he ruled the Osmanli empire with undisputed
strength and brilliance.

The only
son of Selim I, Suleiman attended the palace school and served
his apprenticeship as a governor, first at Bolu, where he was
assigned when about 15, later at Kaffa, the homeland of his
mother, daughter of a Crimean Tatar khan. He also supervised the
state when his father was campaigning. In education and
experience Suleiman surpassed every European ruler of his day.

Campaigns of Expansion

Suleiman continued Selim's expansionist activites, personally
participating in 13 campaigns. This military activity was in
part due to the nature of the state, since, without raiding, as
the Sultan is said to have realized, the Janissaries lacked
income and apolitical outlets for their energies. This was
certainly a crucial cause of later Ottoman decline. The first of
Suleiman's military moves was against Belgrade, captured on Aug.
29, 1521, in retaliation for the harsh treatment accorded a
Turkish embassy seeking tribute of the king of Hungary. Thus the
way into the heartland of central Europe was opened.

Rhodes, only 6 miles off the Turkish coast, was the Sultan's
second military objective. The resident Knights of St. John had
long protected Christian pirates harassing the sealanes to
Egypt. The island capitulated in December 1522 after a bloody
6-month siege. Inhabitants not choosing to leave were given
their full civil rights and a 5-year remission of taxes, an
indication of Suleiman's just - and shrewd - nature.

Suleiman enjoyed the succeeding 3 years at leisure in or near
the capital. However, the groundwork was laid at this time for
two situations - harem influence and the elevation of favorites
- which were to become disastrous for the empire in later
centuries. A slave girl, Roxelana ("the Russian"), so attracted
the sultan that he made her his legal wife. Khurrem Sultan, as
she was formally called, had three children, his successor Selim
II (born 1524), Prince Bayezid, and Princess Mihrimah.

Favoritism also appeared, undermining the morale of a government
service in which promotions had resulted from meritorious
service. The Sultan's favorite, Ibrahim, was a Greek, sold into
slavery by pirates. His mistress educated him, and he became
attached to Suleiman while the latter was still a prince. On
June 27, 1524, Ibrahim was made grand vizier. He was remarkably
capable, but those supplanted in service were disaffected. One
of Ibrahim Pasha's first duties was to reorganize Ottoman
affairs in Egypt in response to uprisings there. The new
arrangements successfully combined a degree of local autonomy
with overall ottoman supervision. Egypt's laws were later
codified on the basis of Ibrahim's changes.

In the summer of 1526 Suleiman broke the power of Hungary. The
Turks advanced into and temporarily occupied the capital in a
major raid necessitated in part by Janissary restlessness over
several years' inactivity. May 1529 saw Suleiman again in the
Danubian area, now in support of the Transylvanian duke, John
Zapolya, in opposition to the Austrians who had occupied Buda.
Ousting them, Suleiman installed Zapolya as his vassal in
Hungary and launched the famous siege of Vienna, Sept. 27-Oct.
15, 1529. On the very eve of the city's surrender, the
Janissaries withdrew, perhaps because Turkish forces were
limited in their military operations by climatic factors. No
winter campaigns were undertaken because the rains made movement
of artillery, men, and supplies too difficult.

Eastern Campaigns

The Sultan's fifth campaign was a minor one against the emperor
Charles V in 1532. Then the wars moved East. In July 1534, the
grand vizier, Ibrahim, took Tabriz and, in November, Baghdad.
There the Sultan spent 18 months, settling the administration
and visiting Kufa, Kerbala, and other holy places. Meanwhile his
foe, Shah Tahmasp, reoccupied many of his conquered territories,
thus necessitating Suleiman's return and leading to the sack of
Tabriz in 1536.

That same year Ibrahim fell from favor. Favorite, confidant,
adviser, policy maker, and even brother-in-law of Suleiman,
Ibrahim was found outside the palace strangled the morning of
March 15, 1536. He had apparently overstepped the bounds of his
position, frequently assuming titles beyond his rank. Since he
was still Suleiman's slave, his extensive property reverted to
his master.

Corfu and Moldavia occupied Ottoman attention between 1537 and
the reconquest and then annexation of Hungary in 1541. Austria's
opposition to the latter act resulted only in further Ottoman
annexations and an annual tribute payment established by peace
treaty in 1547. Austrian treaty violations, however, led to
Turkish acquisition of Temesvar in 1552, but Suleiman did not
participate in that expedition - he was again in pursuit of Shah
Tahmasp.

Court Intrigues

When, in 1553, full-scale operations against Persia resumed,
Roxelana's politicking appeared. Rustem Pasha, the grand vizier
and husband of princess Mihrimah, led the Ottoman forces but
reported the Janissaries were talking of replacing an aging
sultan with his more vigorous eldest son, Mustafa. At Roxelana's
urging, the Sultan joined the army. He met and executed Mustafa
at Eregli on October 16. Prince Jahangir, Mustafa's deformed
brother, committed suicide when he heard the news. Since Mehmed,
Suleiman's favorite, had died in 1543, only Roxelana's sons now
remained alive.

After Mustafa's death, the Sultan continued the war with Tahmasp,
finally settling the border in 1555 after prolonged treaty
negotiations. The Ottomans retained Baghdad and the Persian Gulf
port of Basrah.

The last years of Suleiman's life were marred by the death of
Roxelana in April 1558 and the war, beginning the following
year, between her sons, the sly, intriguing, alcoholic Selim and
the younger Bayezid. Selim was aided by Rustem Pasha and
Mihrimah, whose influence over the Sultan was considerable.
Defeated in battle, Bayezid fled to Iran, vainly asking parental
forgiveness; apparently his request was never received. He was
surrendered to the Sultan's agent, in exchange for gold, and was
executed.

Suleiman's last campaign, carried out when he was past 70, was
again into Hungary. His forces besieged and took the last
non-Turkish fortress, Sziget, in 1566. The Sultan died during
the night of Sept. 5-6, his death kept secret over 3 weeks until
Selim's succession.

Suleiman's Role

Suleiman's military exploits and interest in the hunt indicate
an indefatigable nature. He was also active as a legislator,
bringing to its peak the administrative system of the burgeoning
empire. The laws for which he is famed were necessitated by the
rapid expansion of the state and the governing system.
Predominating were such matters as inheritance rights, ceremony
within the government, criminal punishments, and, in 1530,
regulations to reorganize feudal grants in an effort to end
corruption. Although the income of the state was extensive, the
sumptuous nature of the court and the sub-courts of the princes
and slave viziers created problems which later led to widespread
corruption.

Internationally, the expansion of the empire rearranged European
politics. In 1536 the French king, Francis I, concluded an
alliance with the Turks, raising France's position to that of
Venice and others. Ottoman sea power was long established in the
eastern Mediterranean; now, under Khair al-Din Barbarossa,
Ottoman suzereignty over North Africa was firmed up. Barbarossa
and his successors roamed the Mediterranean, raiding Spanish
coastal areas at will. After the French alliance they often
cooperated with French ships. The only setback occurred in 1565,
when an attack on Malta failed. Ottoman sea power dominated the
area long after Suleiman's death.

Other naval ventures in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean brought
Yemen and Aden into the Ottoman Empire and even led to a siege
of the Portuguese-held Indian city of Diu in 1538. Turkey
produced several famous naval commanders during this period,
including Piri Reis, noted for his cartographic work but
executed for his failure to break Portugal's hold on Ormuz at
the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Cultural progress was also made during Suleiman's reign. Foreign
concepts receded as Ottoman civilization found its own footing.
The Sultan himself, using the name Muhibbi, was quite a poet and
beyond that a patron of poets and inspiration of historians. His
diary is an invaluable record of his reign. He seems also to
have been a humble religious man, composing prayers and eight
times copying the Koran. His religious nature further is
evidenced in the large number of mosques he commissioned.

Architecture was a major achievement of Suleiman's time, most of
the domes and minarets of Istanbul dating from then. Works
ordered by the Sultan include mosques for his father, Roxelana,
Mehmed, Jahangir, Mihrimah, and himself; the aqueducts at Mecca
and Istanbul; and a tomb for the Ottoman-favored Islamic
legalist Abu Hanifa.

~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~

Suleiman I (1494/95–1566; ruled 1520–1566), tenth Ottoman
sultan, born in Trabzon, the son of Hafsa, a Crimean Tatar
princess, and the future sultan Selim I (ruled 1512–1520). Under
Suleiman, the Ottoman Empire became the Islamic world's Sunni
exemplar. Suleiman spent his childhood in Trabzon, where Selim
was governor. As a prince, Suleiman himself received the
governorship first of Kefe (Fedosiya) and then, in 1513, of
Manisa. In 1514–1515 he acted as regent during his father's
campaign against Iran. In 1516–1517, he oversaw the defense of
Edirne while his father campaigned against the Mamluks in Syria
and Egypt.

Suleiman suceeded to the throne in September 1520. In Syria, he
immediately suppressed the revolt of a former Mamluk governor,
Janberdi Ghazali, and then, using as a pretext the Hungarian
maltreatment of his ambassador, he attacked Hungary in 1521,
capturing Belgrade. In 1522, he conquered Rhodes, allowing the
Knights of St. John to depart freely. In 1526 he invaded Hungary
again, defeating and killing King Lajos (Louis II) at Mohács.
Following Suleiman's departure, the Hungarian Diet elected János
Szapolyai (John Zapolya) as king of Hungary, but later in the
year, the Diet of Bratislava elected the Habsburg
counter-claimant, Ferdinand of Austria. In 1529, Ferdinand
occupied Buda. Suleiman, however, expelled him from Buda,
re-enthroned Szapolyai, and unsuccessfully besieged Vienna, the
highwater mark of Ottoman expansion efforts. In 1530, Ferdinand
again besieged Buda, and Suleiman again invaded, forcing
Ferdinand to an agreement that left Szapolyai as king of central
and eastern Hungary and himself as king in the west and north,
both ruling as Suleiman's tributaries.

The truce freed Suleiman to attack the Shi‘ite Safavids of Iran,
for which a series of defections on both sides of the frontier
gave a pretext. In 1533, Suleiman's grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha
reoccupied Bitlis, whose lord had defected to Shah Tahmasb. Next
year he occupied Tabriz and, after the sultan had joined him,
Baghdad. By 1536, the sultan had added Baghdad, Erzurum, and,
temporarily, Van to his empire. In 1533, recognizing the need to
counter the threat especially of Spanish power in the
Mediterranean, Suleiman had appointed as admiral the
privateer-ruler of Algiers, Hayreddin (Khayr ad-Dīn) Barbarossa,
admiral of the Ottoman fleet. The Spanish threat materialized
with the conquest of Tunis by Charles V—king of Spain, Holy
Roman emperor, and brother of Ferdinand—in 1535. This was a
factor persuading Suleiman to agree in 1536 to an anti-Habsburg
alliance with France, which lasted until the Franco-Spanish
treaty of 1559. A proposed Franco-Ottoman campaign in Italy in
1537 failed to materialize. Instead Suleiman unsuccessfully
besieged Venetian Corfu. In 1538, by contrast, Barbarossa
captured most of the Venetian islands in the Aegean and defeated
a combined Spanish, Venetian, and papal fleet in the Gulf of
Prevesa. The war ended in 1540, concluding the period of
Suleiman's major conquests.

In Hungary, meanwhile, Szapolyai's death activated Ferdinand's
claim, and in 1541 and 1542 he besieged Buda. Suleiman responded
by converting central Hungary to an Ottoman province and
Transylvania in the east to a kingdom under Ottoman suzerainty
for Szapolyai's infant son, John Sigismund. In 1543, he led a
campaign to Hungary, securing a line of fortresses along the
western border. The war ended in 1547, but Ferdinand's claim to
Transylvania continued. It was not until 1556, following
campaigns in 1551 and 1552 and the Ottoman occupation of
Temesvár, that the king and his mother could return to the
kingdom. In the Mediterranean, too, the war with the Habsburgs
continued. Charles V's failure to capture Algiers in 1541
encouraged Francis I to renew the Ottoman alliance, and in 1543
a Franco-Ottoman force stormed Nice. The Spanish occupation of
Monastir and Mahdia on the Tunisian coast in 1550 encouraged
further cooperation, but when in 1551, the French fleet failed
to appear for a joint campaign, the Ottoman admiral, Sinan
Pasha, instead seized Tripoli from the Knights of St. John.
Ottoman expansion in North Africa continued with the capture of
Wahran and Bizerta in 1556–1557 and the expulsion of the
Spaniards from Jerba in 1560. However, Suleiman's last major
naval campaign against the Knights on Malta, in 1565, was a
failure.

Immediately after 1547, Suleiman's main concern was the eastern
front and Iran. In 1548, the flight of Shah Tahmasb's brother to
Istanbul gave Suleiman the opportunity to invade, but again
without conquest apart from the recapture of Van. A third
Iranian campaign in 1553–1554 was equally unproductive,
concluding with the treaty of Amasya in 1555, fixing the borders
between the two empires. After 1564, the sultan's attention
turned to Hungary again. With the bulk of Ottoman forces at
Malta, Ferdinand's son Maximilian pressed his claim to
Transylvania: Suleiman's response was to launch a major campaign
in 1566. In September 1566 he died during the siege of Szigetvár.

During his reign, Suleiman had added central Hungary, Iraq, and
territories in eastern Anatolia, the Aegean, and North Africa to
the Ottoman Empire, while from the 1530s his fleets dominated
the eastern Mediterranean. The kings of France, Muslim rulers in
India, and the sultan of Aceh (Sumatra) sought him as an ally,
emphasizing his stature as ruler of a world empire. His reach
into the western Mediterranean, however, depended on cooperation
with the French and the semiautonomous Algerians. After 1540,
Habsburg power in central Europe and the Mediterranean, and the
Safavids on his eastern border, together with geographical
constraints, limited the scope for further conquest and, in the
age of Iberian maritime empires, the Ottoman Empire remained
essentially land-based. Despite a memorandum of 1525 urging
Suleiman to establish an Ottoman hegemony in the Indian Ocean,
efforts to disrupt Portuguese shipping at sea and to dislodge
the Portuguese from Diu in 1538 and Hormuz in 1552 were
unsuccessful.

Despite incessant warfare, the reign was a period of prosperity
in the Ottoman Empire. Tax censuses indicate a rising
population, with an increase in the number and size of
settlements. The treasury remained in surplus, and the standard
of the silver currency relatively stable. There were, however,
discontents, particularly in Anatolia, leading to a series of
popular revolts in the 1520s. In particular, the Safavid shahs
made messianic claims, and their many adherents in the Ottoman
East posed a constant threat of rebellion, which the sultan
controlled through a network of informers.

Suleiman's reign brought conflict within the dynasty. The royal
family reproduced through concubines: the practice of marriage,
abandoned after 1450, had served political, not reproductive
ends. It had also been customary to limit each concubine to one
son, with civil war and fratricide deciding which one was to
succeed. As an only son, Suleiman had succeeded to the throne
unchallenged. However, early in his reign Suleiman became
infatuated with his Slavic concubine Hurrem (known as Roxelanna
in the West) who bore him more than one son and, in 1534, became
his wife. In 1553, when rivalry for the succession increased,
Suleiman, probably with the collusion of Hurrem and her faction,
executed Mustafa, his son by the concubine Mahidevran, leaving
Hurrem's sons Bayezid and Selim as sole contestants. After her
death in 1558, Bayezid rebelled. Suffering defeat in 1559, he
fled to Iran, where, after Shah Tahmasb had extracted a peace
agreement and a payment from Suleiman, he was executed, leaving
Selim as sole heir.

Suleiman was intensely conscious of his image. A number of
European engravings, all deriving from a single original, give a
sense of his appearance, which he clearly tended, applying
make-up in his old age to hide blemishes. To his ordinary
subjects, however, he would appear only occasionally as a
distant figure in a magnificent cavalcade. More enduring are his
titles. To Europeans, he is "the Magnificent" in reference to
the extent of his empire, and to his youthful ostentation, best
known to the Venetians in his commission of a bejewelled triple
tiara in 1532. To Muslims he is "the Lawgiver," a title first
attested in the eighteenth century, but presumably used earlier.
This reflects his promulgation of a new recension of the
"feudal" code compiled circa 1500, under Bayezid II, but more
importantly his co-operation with the chief mufti, Ebu’s-su‘ud,
in systematizing some areas of of Islamic law, and Ebu’s-su‘ud's
reformulation of "feudal" land law in Islamic terms. It was
under Ebu’s-su‘ud's influence that Suleiman became conspicuously
pious in the second half of his reign. Suleiman was the first
Ottoman sultan to adopt formally the title of caliph, implying
leadership of the Islamic world. The impetus for the claim came
from his overwhelming power, his status as guardian of the Holy
Cities, and the need to counter Safavid claims and to emulate
Charles V's status as Holy Roman emperor. After the
Ottoman-Habsburg treaty of 1547, where Charles V no longer used
the title "Emperor," Suleiman also adopted the epithet "Caesar"
or "breaker of Caesars." In the same year, he began the
construction of the Suleimaniye Mosque in Istanbul, a
masterpiece of his chief architect Sinan, as a monument to his
imperial pretensions. Its completion in 1557 coincided with
Bayezid's rebellion, an event that undermined his caliphal-imperial
image. Nonetheless, his death on the battlefield secured him the
posthumous title of "Holy Warrior and Martyr."

~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~

Suleiman I, ‘the Magnificent’ (1494-1566), Ottoman Turk sultan
who ruled from 1520, when Ottoman power was at its zenith. Lord
of ‘the realms of the Romans, the Persians and the Arabs’, his
empire stretched from Algiers to Azerbaijan and from Moldova to
Yemen. One Venetian ambassador reported fancifully, if not
inaccurately, that his empire bordered those of Spain, Persia,
and of Prester John (the fabled emperor of Abyssinia).

Suleiman succeeded his father, Selim ‘the Grim’, on 1 October
1520. At first, the Christian West welcomed the accession of a
man renowned as a scholar. But never would the Ottoman empire be
as admired or feared as under Suleiman. He inherited a superb
military machine which worked because, unlike western European
armies of the time, the forces were promptly paid and supported
by a superb administration. He could put an army of 100, 000
into the field centred on the professional corps of janissaries,
Christian-born men from the Balkans, carefully selected and
superbly trained, particularly in military—and therefore
general—engineering. He was also helped by the schism in the
Christian Church which coincided with his accession. The same
year, Luther set the Reformation in train. Unlike Selim, who had
directed Ottoman expansion east and south, Suleiman sensed it
was time to move west. In 1521 he took Belgrade and moved
against Rhodes, which had been an unwelcome Christian strong
point in the eastern Mediterranean for 200 years. The knights
withdrew to Malta on New Year's Day, 1523. In a characteristic
aside, Suleiman said he was sad to make the Grand Master, an old
man, leave his home and his belongings. In 1526 he defeated a
foolhardy attack by the Hungarian army at Mohacs, and captured
Buda, but delayed the formal annexation of Hungary for twenty
years, allowing the Hungarians to squabble among themselves. In
1532 he perhaps met his match in the Holy Roman Emperor and King
of Spain, Charles V. The Ottoman army was held up unexpectedly
by the stubborn resistance at Guns, 70 miles (113 km) south-east
of Vienna, and Charles did not make the mistake of moving out to
meet the Ottomans, as the Hungarians had.

The Ottoman army possessed some of world's most powerful
artillery, but still preferred the powerful composite bow to the
muskets now becoming dominant in western European armies.
Suleiman's last campaign in 1566 was another incursion into
Habsburg territory, with the largest army he had ever assembled.
On 7 September he died in his tent, among his troops, in the
siege of Szigeth. His grand vizier kept his death secret,
embalmed the body, and carried it home as if it were alive. He
was succeeded by his bibulous son Selim II, ‘the Sot’.

~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~

Sulayman the Magnificent, 1494–1566, Ottoman sultan (1520–66),
son and successor of Selim I. He is known as Sulayman II when
considered as a successor of King Solomon of the Bible and
Qur'an. Under him the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) reached the height
of its power and prestige. He continued his father's conquests
in the Balkans and the Mediterranean, conquering Belgrade in
1521, expelling the Knights Hospitalers from Rhodes in 1522, and
inflicting a crushing defeat on the Hungarians at Mohács in
1526. He unsuccessfully besieged Vienna in 1529 and supported
John Zapolya (John I of Hungary) against Ferdinand of Hungary
and Bohemia (later Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I). John's death
in 1540 and the accession of John II were pretexts for the
outright annexation of Hungary (except for Transylvania and the
section held by Ferdinand) to the Ottoman Empire. In 1536,
Sulayman entered a formal alliance with Francis I of France
against the house of Hapsburg; this alliance remained the basis
of Turkish foreign policy for more than three centuries.

Although Sulayman's vassal Barbarossa made the Turkish fleet the
terror of the Mediterranean, Sulayman was, on the whole,
unsuccessful in his naval warfare against Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V and against Venice. He lost Tunis to Charles in 1535
and failed to take Malta in 1565. Sulayman undertook several
successful campaigns against Persia. An Ottoman naval expedition
to the Red Sea resulted in the conquest of the Arabian
coastlands.

Sulayman died during the siege of Szigetvar, having resumed
warfare in Hungary in 1566. The later years of Sulayman's reign
had been marred by family disputes over the succession. His
favorite wife, Roxelana (or Khurema) intrigued against his
eldest son, Mustafa, on behalf of her two sons, Selim and
Beyazid. Mustafa built up his own faction, which seemed a threat
to Sulayman. In 1553, Sulayman had him executed. Upon Roxelana's
death, Selim and Beyazid quarrelled. Beyazid rose in revolt, met
defeat, and fled to Persia. The shah of Persia was induced to
return him for a large sum, and Beyazid was executed. Selim
succeeded Sulayman as Selim II.

Sulayman's grand viziers, notably Ibrahim (who held office from
1523 until he was executed in 1536), Rustem, and Sokolli, were
capable administrators and contributed to the greatness of his
reign. In his government Sulayman was distinguished for his
justice. His military, educational, and legal reforms earned him
the name Sulayman the Lawgiver among Muslims. He was fond of
pomp and splendour and was a lavish patron of the arts and of
literature. Sinan, the great Turkish architect, worked under his
orders.